Week 2 (History of Anthropology) Flashcards
History of Anthropology
Trace back of origin to Herodotus (5th century BCE), Marco Polo (13th – 14th
century) and Ibn Khaldun (14th century).
* Reports on different cultures.
Christian Missionaries
* Detail reports on cultures they encountered.
Charles Darwin Influenced early anthropologists.
* Biological evolution.
* Survival of the fittest.
History of
Anthropology II
Sir Edward Tylor and Sir. James Frazer.
* Model of cultural evolution
* Lower (Bands) to higher forms of government (State).
* Non westernized cultures called “primitives”.
History of
Anthropology III
Birth of Functionalism.
Cultural Anthropology exploded after WWII
* Hundreds of Anthropology departments in Colleges or Universities established.
* Employed by the State or Governments.
The culture function like the human body
* Age, religion, taboos etc all have function to maintain cohesion.
* Looking at how culture maintains cohesion despite consistent renewal.
* No interested in Agency or internal struggles.
History of
Anthropology IV
Radcliffe-Brown & Malinowski
* Extended Functional-structuralism.
* Human Organizations/cultures develops to meet physical and psychological need.
* Malinowski and the role of fishing
* Magic used to create a security from an uncertain situation.
Julian Steward
* How different nation state develop differently.
* Adapt to their environment.
* Cultures close to the shore will develop differently than one close to mountain range or
praire.
History of
Anthropology V
- French structuralism and Interpretive Anthropology (1950s to 1960).
Claude Levi Strauss
* Symbols teach us more about cultures.
* Myths and stories
Symbolic Anthropology
* Cultures are a system of meanings.
Interpretive Anthropology.
* Seeks to understand what people think about
* People’s ideas and the meaning that are important to them.
History of
Anthropology VI
Rise of Marxism.
Karl Marx
* Historical materialism.
* Dialectics.
Resisting the idea that culture is just symbolic.
Cultural materialism.
* Emphasize on material, aspect of life.
* People’s environment.
* Inequality of wealth and power.
History of
Anthropology VII
Rise of Post-modernism.
Born out of the resistance of Marxism and Structural Functionalism.
Rejected Marx’s overreaching theory.
* Allow people themselves to interpret their own situation.
Reject Objectivity and open for reflexivity.
* Work closely with people.
* Cannot be objective.
* Have to think about our own position.
History of
Anthropology VIII
Two main theories.
Structurism
* Structural determinism.
* People have no control of their action.
* Structures (Economy, religion, media) shape cultures
* Behavior.
* People do not recognize how the structure shape them.
Agency
* People hold agency in changing the structure.
History of
Anthropology IX
Feminism.
Rose out of Marxism.
Look at the inequality between genders.
* Naturalization of gender roles.
* Power and domination.
Highlights People’s different lives experience.
* People’s lives are more complicated.
* People hold more than one social roles/position.
* People status can create advantage in one social context but disadvantage in another context.
Three Debates on Difference
Three main debates on understanding people’s difference.
- Biological determinism vs. Cultural constructionism.
- Interpretive Anthropology vs. Cultural Materialism.
- Structure vs. Agency.
Biological determinism vs.
Cultural constructionism
Biological determinism argues people’s behavior is determined by biological factors.
* Genes.
* hormones
Biological reasons men have “better” spatial skills.
* Spatial skill improved by evolution.
Cultural constructionism.
* People’s behavior explained by cultural factors.
* Behaviour passed down culturally.
* Boys socialized differently than girls.
Interpretive Anthropology
vs. Cultural Materialism
Interpretive Anthropology.
* Study of what people think about, their explanation of their lives and symbols that are important to them.
* Dietary habits of Hindus.
- Cow sacredness.
- Sin to kill and eat cow.
Cultural Materialism.
* Material aspect of live shape cultures
* Three level model.
* Infrastructure shape both the structure (Social organization, kinship) and superstructure (Ideas Values and
beliefs)
Interpretive Anthropology
vs. Cultural Materialism.
Cultural materialist explanation of sacredness of the cow.
* Melvin Harris.
* Serve an important role.
* Eat paper trash and other edible refuse,
* Excrement turned into fertilizer, cooking fuel.
* Plow fields.
* Acknowledge the sacredness
Structurism vs.
Agency
Agency focus on people’s ability to change their situation.
* Make choices.
* Exercise free will.
Structurist
* Free choice is an illusion.
* Larger forces shape people’s action.
Agency and structure complimentary.
* Need agency but also a structure.
* People can exercise free will within structure to make changes.
Cultural relativism
One of the philosophic pillars of anthropology
Franz Boas
* Work with Inuits.
* Realized that different cultures have different perceptions of the same substance, such as
water or snow.
Accept all cultures have own sets of meanings.
Sympathetic understanding of the cultural difference.
* Understand people’s behavior and actions.
* Refrain from judging.
Cultural relativism II
Pushback against ethnocentrism.
* The idea that your culture is the norm.
* Judge other cultures by your own standard.
Not to be confused with ethical relativism.
* Not “everything goes” stance
Downside of Cultural
Relativism.
Apply cultural relativism uncritically
* The holocaust
* No one to question particular value
The Armchair
Anthropologist
In the infancy of Anthropology, fieldwork was applied rarely.
Reports written based on secondary data.
* Missionaries, travelers and explorers’ journals.
* Never visit the place they wrote about.
* No direct experience.
The Verandah Anthropologists
Moved from the armchair to the porch.
* Hired by colonial governments.
* Went to the field but interview “locals” in the porch.
Lewis Henry Lewis
* Direct observation
* Short insight into people’s lives.
* Iroquois.
Navigating the Field II
Culture shock.
* Uneasiness, anxiety that occurs when shifting to a new
culture.
* Impact one’s ability to navigate culture
Reverse culture shock.
* Re-think one’s native culture.
Participant Observation
Developed by Bronislaw Malinowski.
Learning about cultures by living with locals for extended
time while gathering data.
See the culture from the “native point of view”.
* Recorded songs, rituals, language.
* Isolated cultures.
Participant
observation II
Today’s Participation Observation.
New methods to highlight interaction between local and
global connections.
Multi-sited research
* More than one location.
* Hair-styles among African American women (USA and
England)
Process Before Fieldwork
Literature review.
* Gathering secondary data.
* Examine gaps in knowledge.
Possible Short cut
* Interview experts.
* Collaborative study.
The research can change once you get to the field.
* Weiner’s work in Trobriand Island.
* Cover women’s trading network.
Preparing for Fieldwork
Secure funding.
Gain necessary visas (if travel internationally).
Start communicating with communities.
* Get community approval.
Go through ethics boards.
* Informed consent.
* NO deceptions.
* Not harming participants.
Navigating the Field
Establish Rappaport within community.
* Complexed system.
* Whom to trust? (Gatekeepers)
* Gaining their trust as well.
How one represent itself.
* People might put label on the anthropologist
Gift giving.
* Complexed system.
* What is appropriated gift? Appropriated gift to receive?
Your social status matter.
* Influence who you can talk to.
* The access to certain informants.
Collecting Data
Deductive vs. Inductive research.
Deductive approach/
* A research question/hypothesis.
* Observation/interviews etc.
* Produced Etic data = Data to test a hypothesis.
* Quantitative data = Numeric information.
Inductive approach.
* Without hypothesis
* Unstructured interviews, stories and myths.
* Emic data = Reflect on what insiders say or understand about their culture.
* Qualitative data = Nonnumeric information, records of conversation or filming events.
Collecting Data II
Interview
* One on one.
* Group interview.
Questionnaire
* Unstructured or structured interviews.
* Rate one’s position.
Collecting Data III
Life history
* In depth description of an indiidual’s life.
* Nisa: The life and Times of a !Kung Woman
* Difficult to find someone who represents an entire culture.
Time allocation study
* Collect data how people spent their time on particular activities.
Text
* Dissect texts.
Collecting Data IV
Field notes
* Anthropologist’s journal.
* Records what one experience daily.
Audio recordings, photographs and videos.
* Transcribing recordings.
* A tedious process.
Analyzing Data
Finding themes or patterns in your data.
Ethnography is the end product.
* What makes cultural anthropology special.
* Detailed description of living culture through observation.
Issues in Fieldwork
Ethics.
* No longer condone covert research.
* Not working under government.
* Participation in the U.S. Human Terrain System (HTS)
* Employed by the military.
* Disclose sensitive political information.
Safety in the field.
* Physical and psychological danger (War zone anthropology).
* Female anthropologist in most danger (sexual harassment, abuse etc.)
